


Like a Secret in Your Throat

by howdoyoupronounceiero



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Amnesia, Character Death, Falling In Love, Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Murder, Mystery, Sad, Schizophrenia, Teen Romance, Teenagers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:36:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howdoyoupronounceiero/pseuds/howdoyoupronounceiero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard is a mental institute patient with a vivid imagination to say the least. He lives a paranoid existence, but everything changes with the arrival of a new patient, Frank. Gerard finds that Frank's condition makes it difficult to develop a real relationship with him and is often led to heartbreak. Meanwhile, the line between Gerard's delusions and reality becomes less clear and some of his seemingly crazy theories start to seem like they may have some truth behind them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this story after reading the amazing fic (and my favorite fic of all time) A Splitting of the Mind by shoved2agree. If you haven't read that I definitely reccomend it :) Here's a link --> http://shoved2agree.livejournal.com/1130.html

            Suddenly my eyes fluttered open and I lay awake, clutching my covers to my chest and breathing heavily into the darkness as I waited for my vision to adjust. Slowly but surely, as my breathing evened out to a steady rate, my eyes adjusted to the lack of light and the pitch black around me formed into fuzzy edges until I could recognize the shape of a door in the wall ahead of me and a dresser at the end of my small white-sheeted bed.

            _Where was I?_

            I had definitely fallen asleep in my own bed last night, but the bed I was in now wasn’t mine. I could tell it was small because my feet almost reached the end of it and I wasn’t exactly the tallest guy around. It really looked more like a hospital bed than anything…

Suddenly a thought crossed my mind and I turned to look at the digital clock that sat on the end table to my left.

            **12:42AM** , blared the neon, orange numbers. I jumped out of the bed excitedly and onto the floor, my legs getting tangled in the starchy sheets, but I reached out and caught myself on the end table before I fell over. I had no idea where the hell I was, but I knew one thing. I smiled as I carefully stepped out of the sheets that were wrapped around my ankles. It was now _officially_ Halloween and I was _officially_ seventeen years old. I stumbled towards the door and felt along the wall beside it searching for a light switch, but the wall was perfectly smooth with no light switch to be found.

  _Huh, where would it be?_

 After what had to be at least five full minutes of fumbling around in the dark and feeling up every wall in the tiny area, I came to the conclusion that there was no light switch in the room at all. This realization disconcerted me.

_What kind of bedroom doesn’t have a light switch? Was I dreaming?_

I remembered reading somewhere that when you’re dreaming, light switches usually don’t work, so I felt like not having a light switch at all could probably be a good indication too. I looked back at my undone bed, the white sheets spilling onto the floor where I had jumped out of them in my excitement at the realization that it was officially my birthday. I couldn’t really be dreaming, could I? I proceeded to scan the rest of the room, sucking idly on my lip ring, my eyes finally landing on the little digital clock which now read **12:48AM**. It all looked pretty damn real and I was also pretty sure I’d be able to tell if I was actually dreaming. Usually if the idea just crosses your mind that you might be dreaming while you’re in a dream, you realize that you’re dreaming. I pinched myself on the arm as hard as I could for good measure, and, yeah, this was definitely real life because I felt the sharp pain shoot up and down my arm immediately and quickly stopped pinching and started rubbing the sore spot instead.

I decided I was going to get to the bottom of this. If this was some kind of weird birthday surprise, I wasn’t going to wait around till morning to figure it out. I was going to find out where the hell I was right now. I cautiously placed my hand on the cold metal of the door handle and slowly, slowly pressed it down, for some reason feeling like I should be careful not to make a sound. When the handle was pushed down far enough that I heard the little latch open, I slowly, slowly pushed the door open and what I was suddenly peeking my head into was a long, long, hallway with white and light green tiles lining the floor.

_Creepy._

            I was just about to drop my hand from the door handle when suddenly the filtered moonlight that dotted the hallway cast its glow on my hand and I realized there was writing on it. I didn’t remember writing anything on my hand…

            I brought the writing up to my nose in hopes of making out the words in the dimly lit hallway.

“ ** _Trust the boy with the pretty eyes._** ” ****

I quickly pulled my hand away from my nose, startled. It was definitely my own crappy handwriting. I had even underlined the words twice as if they were really important. I continued to stare at the message in confusion, but making sure to hold it at a safe distance now as if it were going to suddenly leap off my hand and start attacking my face.

            _Why didn’t I remember writing that? And since when did boys have pretty eyes?_

            A sudden **_CRASH_** snapped my attention away from my hand to a slightly ajar door further down the hallway.

Complete silence once again engulfed the eerie tiled hall and I stood frozen in place, staring at the partially open door, daring it to make another sound.

            It didn’t.

            I slowly stepped fully into the hallway and eased the door that I had come from closed behind me, now being even more careful not to make a sound. Something about this place was giving me the creeps and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing straight up. _It hadn’t even been an hour yet, but this was definitely going to go down as one of my creepiest Halloweens._

            I slowly crept down the hallway, careful not to let my bare feet make a sound as I walked. I cautiously avoided spots of moonlight on the tile as if I would be discovered if I dared to leave the shadows. As I neared the slightly ajar door I began to hear a muffled voice… a woman’s voice?

            I finally reached the doorway and pressed myself up flat against the wall beside it, holding my breath as I listened.

            “ _You know I won’t hesitate to kill Frank too if you fuck this up you little bastard,_ ” the venomous whisper of a woman reached my ears. My heart rate quickly sped up at the mention of my name, banging against my ribs so loudly that I quickly brought my arms to my chest in an attempt to silence it.

            _What the fuck? Was this lady talking about_ me _?_

My heart still pounding deafeningly in my ears, and scared absolutely shitless, I cautiously poked my head around the edge of the doorframe and into the dark, moonlit room.

            At first all I could see was the back of a tall woman in a dark pant suit. Her hair was piled up into some kind of pony tail that’s silhouette looked bulky and strange in the dark making me wonder if she was wearing some kind of hat. As I squinted to try to discern what the hell was on this lady’s head, she shifted to the side and I suddenly noticed the other person in the room.

            Just beyond the woman, sat literally the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen in my life. His dark, jet black hair fell across the feminine features of his pale face as he wrote intently on a piece of paper that lay on the desk in front of him.

I suddenly noticed with a shock that the woman was holding a gun up to the boy’s head as he wrote. My hand quickly flew to my mouth as I heard the sound of a small gasp escape my lips.

            Just then, the dark haired boy’s eyes shot up and met with mine.

            My mind blanked as I stared back, meeting the surprised gaze of his hazel eyes which seemed to somehow sparkle in the little moonlight that filtered through the curtained windows. I’d never seen eyes like his.

_Trust the boy with the pretty eyes._

This had to be the boy with the pretty eyes that I had told myself to trust. There was no way that this wasn’t him.

            I couldn’t seem to break the gaze; I just stood frozen in place staring back at him from where I stood with my head peeking around the doorway. He seemed to be trying to say something to me with his eyes, but I couldn’t figure out what. The weirdest thing though, was that he was looking at me like he _knew me_. Like he _really knew me_. And the even weirder thing was that, _I_ felt like I knew _him_.

            Suddenly the boy’s sparkling hazel eyes darted back to the paper in front of him and he continued writing.

            It was then that I realized I had been holding my breath and quietly let it out. The whole moment of eye contact had lasted less than a second, but it had this weird time-warping effect that made me feel like it had lasted an eternity.

            “ _You’ve done this to yourself kid, if you weren’t such a fucking nosy pain in the ass this could’ve been a lot easier for both of us,_ ” the woman continued to whisper viciously into the boy’s ear, not noticing my presence.

A glint of silver suddenly caught my eye.

            On the desk was a long and weird looking knife that I had never seen anything like before. I admired the strange looking knife for a moment before my attention snapped back to the woman’s thin finger poised haphazardly against the trigger of the gun. My eyes followed the barrel to where it rested against the boy’s dark locks and my heart rate sped up as I realized how much danger he was really in.

            _I had to save him_.

            I had never felt anything as strongly in my life as I did just then, _I had to save this boy with the eyes_.

            I took a deep breath, sucking in my stomach as far as I could, then slowly, nervously, slid through the partially open doorway, careful not to make a sound. Once I’d made it through, I made my way painfully slowly towards the weird knife on the desk, but kept my eyes locked on the woman’s back as she continued to threaten the boy with her rough and venomous whispers.

“ _Make it convincing you idiot, don’t try putting any hidden message crap in there,_ ” she went on completely oblivious to my presence. The boy concentrated hard on whatever it was that he was writing, pretending not to notice me as my sweaty, nervous fingers curled around the grip of the knife that rested in its display stand on the desk.

_Holy shit, what was I doing with a knife? Was I really going to use this?_

I lifted the knife, surprised by its weight, and stepped nervously, and as quietly as I could, around the desk and right behind the woman, who was still hissing menacingly into the dark haired boy’s ear. I slowly raised my arms with the knife above my head, and paused like that, staring at the point in the middle of her back that I was about to thrust this knife into. I couldn’t believe I was going to murder someone… and on my birthday too.

_Holy shit. I was actually going to kill a person. Fuck. Shit. Shit. Shit._

 The weird knife hovered menacingly in the air, glinting in the moonlight. I was really going to do this. _I was going to kill her_. All I had to do was drop the knife into her back and it was over. The dark haired boy would be safe.

            Suddenly he stopped writing and looked up at me with those strange, sparkling eyes through the sweeps of jet black hair that fell in his face. My breath caught in my throat as our eyes locked.

            The woman abruptly stopped whispering mid-sentence.

            _Now._


	2. Well Let's Go Back to the Middle of the Day that Starts It All

\- 6 months earlier - __

**(Gerard’s P.O.V.)**

 

 _I. Think. Dr. Wesk. Is. Trying to. Kill. Me._ I signed to Serap with my free hand as I used my other hand to pick up my spoon and lift another bite of soggy cereal to my mouth.

Serap looked up at me from under her ornate purple hijab, shock and horror evident in her wide mint green eyes, the only part of her face that was visible. I could tell that her terrified expression was genuine and that’s why Serap was the only person I actually liked in this place. She was the only person in this god forsaken hell-hole who actually took me seriously when I proclaimed my calculated and usually vitally important deductions.

 _How. Do. You. Know._ she signed back with her deft, little brown hands, her eyes still wide as she watched me for an explanation.

I swallowed one last spoonful of tasteless cereal before pushing the bowl aside and leaning conspiratorially over the table towards her. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, even though no one could understand our made up sign language anyways.

 _I. Noticed. She. Has. Tattoos. On. Wrists._ I signed, motioning to my wrists for the last word. I took a very important dramatic pause before continuing, _Chinese. Symbols. Meaning. **Bringer. Of. Death.**_

 _You. Speak. Chinese._ Serap signed back, her thin dark brown eyebrow raising questioningly at me. I rolled my eyes at her question. You’d think Serap would know me well enough by now not to ask me stupid things like that.

 _Yes. I’m. Connected. To. The Tap. Remember. I. Know. All. Languages._ I signed out, trying to be patient, _Even. Turkish._

I could tell by the creases that formed around Serap’s eyes that she was smiling at the mention of her first language. She lifted her hands to sign something back just as we noticed Matt’s tall and skinny figure hovering over our table.

“Come on, group session time,” he reminded us with a big cheesy smile, motioning with his hands for us to stand up. We both started to stand as he turned and walked towards the group discussion room, looking back over his shoulder to add, “And don’t forget to clean up your trash!”

Despite the fact that Matt was actually the only orderly I didn’t hate with a burning passion, I decisively left my cereal bowl exactly where it was. Serap didn’t comment on this, but just rolled her eyes and walked alongside me as we made our way to the group discussion room. She was used to my stubborn ways and didn’t even bother trying to correct them anymore.

 _Look. For. The Tattoos._ I signed to her quickly just as we turned the corner and walked through the doorway into the group session room.

The first thing I noticed as I walked in and took a seat in the circle of plastic chairs was that there was a new kid today.

He sat slumped in his little plastic chair, his arms crossed, looking defiantly at Dr. Wesk who didn’t seem to notice the short boy’s glares.

My eyes immediately went to his ears, and not only were they  pierced, but they were gauged to my great relief.

_Good, I didn’t want him to be one of them._

The boy’s facial features were remarkably defined, his eyebrows perfectly arched over his round, alert eyes. Below them, the artfully thin lines of his lips curled into a mini-scowl and I noticed that his bottom lip had a tiny, glinting bit of metal in it.

However, my attention was diverted from the new boy with the ripped jeans and cool hair to Serap as she suddenly stood up beside me. I looked up at her surprised and saw that she was standing to let Bob take her seat. Bob didn’t so much as thank her or even look at her. He just brushed past her and plopped himself down as Serap stood looking down at her feet.

I looked around quickly realizing there were no seats left. I felt anger bubble up dangerously in my chest; just because Bob had anger management problems and everyone was afraid of him didn’t mean he had the right to be a total douchebag and take seats from girls.

I quickly ripped out my notepad from my pocket and scribbled in big angry letters, “GIVE SERAP HER SEAT BACK.”

I shoved the page in Bob’s face and watched as he read, his eyebrows knitting together in anger.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he spat at me sarcastically as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair making himself comfortable, “was _Serap_ sitting here?”

The way he spat her name out as if it tasted bad on his tongue made the anger in me rise even higher and I stood up abruptly, my hands balled into tight fists at my side.

“Gerard, calm down, Bob was not aware that Serap was sitting in that seat,” Dr. Wesk said in her annoyingly calm and soothing voice. _Bullshit._ She watched me intently through her thick glasses until I unballed my fists and stepped away from my chair. I scribbled onto my notepad, “Serap can have my seat. At least I’m a gentleman.”

I showed the notepad to Dr. Wesk and then pointedly held it towards Bob as I stepped back and stood just outside the circle of chairs. Serap looked embarrassed, but shyly sat down in my seat, her eyes still cast downward.

As my eyes left Serap and looked around at the circle of patients once again, I noticed that the new boy was watching me with great interest and my stomach fluttered uncomfortably. I quickly averted my gaze, and focused my attention on Dr. Wesk instead. I could still feel the kid watching me though and I felt heat rise to my cheeks under his fascinated gaze.

_Why was I getting all stupid and nervous like this? Why did I even care if some punk kid was staring at me?_

I made a conscious effort to look more nonchalant, crossing my arms and leaning my weight heavily onto one leg.

“So, who would like to share first?” Dr. Wesk asked pleasantly, gesturing out at the circle with her arms. As she did so her sleeves slipped up her arms just enough to reveal the Chinese symbols on her wrists. Serap nudged my leg excitedly and looked up at me with wide eyes. I nodded back enthusiastically, unable to keep the satisfied smirk off my face. I was proud of myself for noticing the tiny tattoos and now Serap saw them too. At this rate we’d have Dr. Wesk and her evil plans backed into a corner in no time.

“Frank, how about you introduce yourself to the group?” Dr. Wesk suggested, tucking a stray black dreadlock behind her ear and smiling at the new kid.

The kid looked up at me for some reason before looking back down at his knees and the weird fluttery feeling in my stomach came back.

“Um, I’m Frank,” he mumbled, picking at the rips in his jeans, “and as of today, I’m seventeen.”

“It’s your birthday?” Ray asked, a big stupid smile plastered on his face and his curls bouncing excitedly as he leaned into the circle towards the new kid who looked up at him uncomfortably.

“Yeah, I know Halloween’s kind of a weird day to have as your birthday,” the kid said with a shrug, a small smile playing on his lips as if he were actually really proud of the fact that his birthday was on Halloween.

Which would make sense…except for the fact that it was November.

Everyone looked around in confusion, not sure if they were missing something.

“But it’s not Halloween today, Frank,” Dr. Wesk told him in a gentle voice, resting her clasped hands on her crossed legs.

Frank looked up at her and raised an eyebrow before looking at the rest of us who just stared back at him.

“W-what?” was all he seemed to be able to say as he looked from face to face growing more and more confused as he saw that none of us knew what he was talking about.

“Frank, why do you think you’re here?” Dr. Wesk prodded in a sugary sweet voice that made me want to throw up.

My attention was diverted from the conversation between Dr. Wesk and the new boy when Serap nudged my leg and I looked down to see that she was signing at me.

_You. Think. New. Boy. Is. Cute._

I immediately felt my cheeks grow hot and I hurriedly signed my utter disagreement. _I’m not even gay for god’s sake._ I signed this fact to Serap but she just giggled under the purple cloth of her hijab and turned back to pay attention to whatever dumb discussion was going on. I gave the leg of her chair a little kick, feeling very wrongfully and unjustly accused, but she didn’t seem to notice.


	3. It Ain't The Mark Or The Scar That Makes You One

_I. Think. New. Kid. Has._ Serap’s delicate hands paused mid-sign as we walked down the white and green tiled halls towards the courtyard. I watched her expectantly as she struggled over how to communicate the next word.

__

_Forgetful. Disease._  she finally concluded.

I stared at her in bewilderment as I held the heavy glass door to the courtyard open for her. We didn’t have a sign for the word amnesia, but that couldn’t be what she meant. It was perfectly clear to me that Frank did not belong at Gavon Center for Mental Healing. I could just tell that there was nothing wrong with him. There had to be some other reason that Dr. Wesk wanted him here... she had to have some ulterior motive.

My attention suddenly snapped back to focus as we entered the crisp November air and I caught the end of whatever Serap was signing now.

_Thought. It. Was. Halloween. But. It’s. November._

She looked up at me with her mint green eyes expectantly and I turned my head so that she wouldn’t notice how upset I was getting about her accusing the innocent new kid of being a loon.

 _Anyone. Could. Forget. The. Date. What’s. The. Big. Deal._  I signed back, keeping my face turned away from her, not trusting my expression to remain as calm as I wanted to come off.

If Serap signed anything back, I didn’t bother to look, and I made no more attempt at conversation as we made our way to the enormous maple in the far corner of the courtyard. As our feet finally left the pavement of the dull gray sidewalk, the welcome crunching of fallen leaves underneath our shoes filled the silence that constantly surrounded the two of us. No matter how annoyingly loud the other kids managed to be as they ran throughout the courtyard tackling each other and shrieking, their noise always seemed distant. It never seemed to penetrate the silent little world that me and Serap shared.

As the two of us reached the maple and sat down against its wide trunk, I subtly scanned the courtyard for the new kid. My eyes skimmed past Bob kicking over the sand rocket ship the Peyser twins had built in the sand box, Ray running after Psycho Lisa with some sort of mud cake that he’d baked, and Matt leaning against the building wall lost in his Deadpool comic, until I finally concluded that Frank was nowhere to be seen and that Matt does a horrible job at supervising us.

I wondered idly if Matt could possibly be a catcher. I often struggled over the fact that only one of his ears was pierced, but as Matt didn’t seem like a serious threat at the moment, I decided not to waste brain power on that conundrum and to give the tall, skinny Asian orderly the benefit of the doubt for now.

 _It’s. Obvious. That. There. Is. Nothing. Wrong. With. The. New. Kid_. I signed slowly and decisively to Serap. _I. Think. Dr. Wesk. Has. Brought. Him. Here. To. Kill. Him. Too._

            Serap stared up at me with complete horror and shock in her wide mint green eyes.

            _Why. Would. Dr. Wesk. Want. To. Kill. Him._ she signed back at me in alarm. __

I took a moment to ponder the question. Considering the fact that Dr. Wesk was no doubt a catcher there could really only be one reason that she would bring this kid here to be murdered.

            _She. Must. Suspect. That. He. Is. Connected. To. The Tap._ I signed the thought to Serap as it came to me.

The crinkle of her eyes and the slight movement of her purple hijab told me that Serap was smiling. Why in God’s name would she be smiling? Did I not just tell her that Dr. Wesk had captured another innocent kid connected to the Tap and was planning his murder?

 _What. Are. You. Smiling. About._ I demanded before crossing my arms, miffed.

 _Nothing. Just. If. New. Boy. Is. Also. Connected. To. The Tap. Then. You. Two. Are. Just. Meant. To. Be._ she teased, a small chuckle escaping through the soft purple fabric.

My eyes widened and I threw my hand over her mouth as quickly as I could, hoping I had prevented the majority of the damage. I looked around to see if anything had changed, but Matt was still gazing down at his comic book and idiotic Ray was still chasing Lisa around with that mud cake.

Serap waved my hand away from her mouth before signing, _You. Worry. Too. Much._

To her we may be safe here in the courtyard with no one but the other kids and Matt, but I wasn’t so sure, after all Matt was still under my suspicions with his single pierced ear. There was no such thing as worrying too much when it came to the catchers.

 _Just. Be. Careful._ I warned her, making sure that she was paying attention. _Your. Soul. Is. The. Most. Important. Thing. You. Have._

Serap nodded, and I knew she had heard my spiel before so I ended it there, but I still felt uneasy after her outburst. I knew her laugh had been quiet and small, but I couldn’t help worry for her safety. If a catcher had been nearby that little bit of her soul would be gone, stolen away by their listening ears, along with the knowledge and secrets that part of her soul might’ve contained.

Just as Serap raised her hand to form a sign, the heavy glass doors at the end of the courtyard swung open and Dr. Wesk walked out into the crisp Autumn air with the short new kid in her wake. _I should’ve known she had him!_

I exchanged a worried glance with Serap, hoping the new kid hadn’t said too much to that witch, when suddenly Dr. Wesk was calling my name.

“Gerard!” she shouted from the safety of the sidewalk, probably not wanting to get her heels ruined by the dirt and leaves.

 _Hold. Down. The. Fort._ I signed quickly to Serap as I got up and walked towards where she stood. I normally wasn’t this obedient, but the new kid was still standing beside her and I couldn’t help but feel somehow attracted to him, like a magnet. It must’ve been because I now knew that he might also be connected to the Tap.

As soon as I was within reach, Dr. Wesk grabbed my wrist firmly, as if she herself was surprised I had come so willingly and was afraid I was going to bolt at any moment.

“Frank, this is the courtyard where the children like to socialize and have fun,” she explained in a falsely sweet voice that made me feel sick, “You can play with anyone that you like, just make yourself at home.”

Frank nodded and lingered for a moment longer, until it was clear that Dr. Wesk had nothing more to say to him and he hurried off, not making eye contact with me once. I watched him as he walked away with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I was captivated by his gait and the way he kicked at the leaves as he went, until the tightening of Dr. Wesk’s grip around my wrist snapped my attention back to her.

“Your turn,” she snapped with a tight smile. As she drug me through the double glass doors, I turned my head in an attempt to catch one last glance of the new kid, but only managed to catch a sympathetic look from Matt, his comic book temporarily dangling at his lap.


	4. I Hate The Ending Myself, But It Started With An Alright Scene

            “Let’s talk,” were the first words that came out of Dr. Wesk’s mouth as I took my usual seat in the crappy old chair across from her desk.

I raised my eyebrow at her, inviting her to continue. She should know by now that ‘let’s talk’ meant that she would be the one doing the talking.

“Okay then,” she continued after a short silence, “we’ll get straight to the point. I’m starting you on a new medication.”

My attention was immediately pulled away from the weird knife that was on display on her desk and I frantically searched her eyes in an attempt to make out whether or not she was serious.

“Why is that so shocking to you Gerard?” she asked, retaining her calm and condescending composure, “This is a mental health facility. You came here to be treated, so I am going to treat you.”

I grimaced as she spelled it out for me so plainly; I didn’t need to be started on any new fucking medicine. I was supposed to be getting out of here. I tried to convey all this to Dr. Wesk with my incredulous expression, but she only smirked and pushed a paper and pen across the desk towards me.

“I don’t need medicine, I’m getting better, ask Matt.” I scribbled quickly before swiveling the paper around to show her. As she read it I quickly scribbled underneath my first message, “I don’t believe in that stupid catcher stuff anymore.”

Apparently this last statement amused her to no end. I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms as I watched her laugh at my claim.

“Oh god, oh god, that’s good Gerard,” she gasped, pulling a silk handkerchief from a desk drawer and dabbing at her teary eyes, “Okay, okay, if you don’t believe in catchers anymore let’s hear you say something.”

_Of course. Just what a **catcher** would ask me to do._

Did Dr. Wesk realize how obvious it was to me that she was a catcher? Or maybe she wanted me to know what she was, just so she could toy with me as I lived my life in fear. Either way, I didn’t grant her the satisfaction of responding to her request with so much as a shake of my head. I simply sat staring at her with my arms folded across my chest. This of course only caused her laughing fit to start back up. Apparently I was endlessly hilarious.

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll feel much better after you start on the medicine and you’ll be talking in no time,” she concluded finally, after I had patiently sat and waited for her witch-like cackling to subside. She paused and waited a few moments as if I were going to respond until she finally waved her hand in dismissal. I stood up and was about to get the hell out of there, until I remembered something that I actually _had_ wanted to share with her. Halfway to the door I spun around in my tracks and ran back to her desk.

This seemed to startle her, but I ignored her questioning glances as I scribbled onto the paper that still lie on her desk, “In case you forgot, I can read Chinese.”

And with that I turned back around and exited the office, not bothering to see her reaction.

 

~~

 

 _What. Kind. Of. New. Medicine._ Serap signed back to me across the lunch table, the worry apparent in her thin eyebrows.

I just shrugged and continued half-heartedly mushing my macaroni and cheese together with my fork. It wasn’t fair. Even though I _knew_ Dr. Wesk was a catcher and that she was trying to kill me, there was still nothing I could do about it. What kind of sick world was this where adults were allowed to plot the murder of innocent children and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them? For all I knew this new medicine she was assigning me could be a fast acting poison that would kill me on the spot.

Then and there I decided that no matter what, even if I had less than a few seconds between the time that I took the poison and the time I died, I would somehow find a way to hide somewhere that Dr. Wesk would never find me in time. Her purpose in all of this was all too clear: she wanted to catch my entire soul as it escaped in my dying breath, the catcher’s Holy Grail. There was no way I was going to let this happen; in the wrong hands the tap was a weapon of mass destruction.

Serap’s small hand waving in my face snapped me out of my thoughts and I looked up at her from my mushy heap of cheese and pasta.

            _New. Boy. Staring. At. You._ she signed fast and clumsily, her eyes lighting up with excitement and amusement.

            I immediately felt a hot blush creep into my cheeks followed immediately by anger.

            _Not. Gay. Don’t. Care._ I signed in Serap’s face with huge swooping motions so that she wouldn’t miss what I was saying as she stared over my shoulder at what could only be the new boy.

When Serap only ignored me, my anger subsided momentarily and my curiosity got the best of me. I snuck a quick glance over my shoulder and saw the new kid in his ripped jeans sitting at a table all alone in the back of the cafeteria, his head down and eyes on his food.

            I spun back around to face Serap, feeling a little disappointed that he hadn’t actually been staring at me and a little embarrassed that I had actually looked.

            _You. Lied._ I signed once Serap’s attention had finally shifted back to me from the kid in with the lip ring and cool hair in the back of the cafeteria.

            Her eyes widened at the accusation, _No. I. Swear. He. Was. Looking. Right. At. You._

            I just rolled my eyes and tried to act nonchalant about it, like I didn’t really care one way or the other… but I did.

            _Let’s. Go. Sit. With. Him._ I watched with surprise as Serap signed out those words. Serap and I had always kept our distance from the others at the institute. We _never_ sat with other kids voluntarily. Admittedly it was mostly out of social anxiety and misanthropy, but it was also partially out of practicality as it was very hard to communicate with anyone who didn’t know our sign language.

            _He. Won’t. Understand. Our. Language._ I pointed out to her. I couldn’t help but feel a nagging hope at the back of my mind that Serap would win this argument.

            _Who. Cares. He. Seems. Lonely._ she insisted, not letting me win, just as I’d hoped. However, I pretended to be exasperated by this statement, throwing my hand over my face and dragging it down slowly as I let out a sigh.

            _Fine._ I signed after pretending to deliberate for a few more moments. _Just. This. Once._

            Serap jumped up from her seat the second I agreed and before I could even stand to follow her, she was already taking a seat across from the new kid, who took absolutely no notice of her. He didn’t even look up from his food.

            Serap turned to me and smiled as I sat down next to her, and I carefully avoided eye contact with the new kid. I attempted to act as if I didn’t even notice he was sitting there, and I had just _happened_ to sit down at the same table.

            In my peripheral vision I saw his head shoot up from his staring contest with his mac and cheese, his eyes immediately locking onto me. I continued to determinedly look everywhere else but him.

            “Um, hi.”

            That was all he said, but I immediately felt an uncomfortable flutter in my stomach at the sound of his voice. The heat rose to my cheeks and I wished he would turn his attention to Serap, I wasn’t good at this whole social interaction thing.

            After the silence between us had become unbearable (and after Serap had made it clear that she was offering no help in the situation besides sitting and smiling dumbly at us) I finally turned and looked straight at the boy.

            There was that flutter again, but this time stronger. I finally just decided to admit it to myself, _he was gorgeous._

            There was no point in ignoring that fact any longer; obviously me thinking another guy was attractive meant nothing. It didn’t mean I _liked_ him, and it certainly didn’t mean that I was gay. It was just hard not to notice his perfectly arched eyebrows and the way his  dark jaggedly cut hair ran down the middle of his head and fell almost mysteriously over his face. I was fascinated by the way the dark flop of hair contrasted so starkly with the bleached shaved sides of his head, and I wondered momentarily if he had cut and dyed it on his own.

            He watched me expectantly, as if waiting for me to speak, his wide light brown eyes locked with my hazel ones. I didn’t know what to do though, so I just stared back.

            “Your eyes are…” the boy started weakly before cutting himself short and looking back down at his mac and cheese.

            I stared at him trying to process what had just happened.

 _My eyes are what?_  I opened my mouth to ask, only realizing what I was about to do seconds before the words escaped my lips. I clamped my mouth shut, horrified at my impulsiveness. After seven years of silence I had almost just completely blown it over a stupid question about _my eyes_. I couldn’t let this kid affect me so much.

I got up abruptly and turned to walk towards the glass doors of the cafeteria without checking to see if Serap had followed. I was done with lunch for today.


	5. Now The Red Ones Make Me Fly, And The Blue Ones Help Me Fall

            I stared up at the strip of florescent light that ran down the center of my bedroom ceiling, wishing I could turn it off. I didn’t want to be awake anymore; I hated living in constant dread like this. I just wanted to slip into sweet, dreamless sleep and forget all my fears.

_Maybe I should just kill myself before Dr. Wesk has the chance. Would that be the noble thing to do?  It would definitely piss her off._

 __ A smile stretched across my face as I imagined her finding out that after all of these years of plotting my murder, I had simply offed myself in the middle of the night with no one around to catch my dying breath.

I shifted my gaze from the florescent light, which was starting to hurt my eyes anyways, to the small table beside my bed. The tabletop was bare except for a few pens, a roll of tape and a digital alarm clock. Maybe if I bashed my head with the clock hard enough it would do the trick… but then again maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to end up failing and just giving myself brain damage.

_But maybe if I-_

 __ A light knock on the door interrupted my thoughts.

I turned my head to look at the door expectantly, until it finally opened and Matt walked in holding an orange vial and a glass of water.

“Hey,” he greeted me as he closed the door behind him with his foot, “Dr. Wesk ordered this for you.”

_Oh right, the new medicine, great._

 __ I sat up in my bed as he took a seat on the edge of the bedside table, the glass of water and the vial of pills still in his hands.

“So is the cyanide in the pills or the water?” I scrawled across the first page of the notepad that lay beside me then turned it around so he could read it.

            As soon as his eyes had scanned the page he let out a laugh, making me smile. Matt’s laughs weren’t condescending or downright evil like Dr. Wesk’s; when Matt laughed, you knew he was laughing with you.

“My money’s on the pills,” he said as he shook one out onto my open palm then held the glass of water out towards me, “Now swallow it.”

I looked down at the tiny blue capsule in my hand, fear welling up in my stomach. It was small and innocuous, but I didn’t underestimate it. I knew it could take my life away in a second.

Matt waited patiently for me to put the tiny capsule in my mouth, his arm still outstretched towards me with the glass of water. My first instinct was to chuck the stupid pill clear across the room, but I had spent the past few months trying to convince Matt that I didn’t need to be at Gavon’s and I wasn’t about to throw all that hard work away with one temper tantrum.

So instead I gingerly set the blue pill down on the bedside table then reached for my notepad again and wrote, “All jokes aside, Dr. Wesk really is trying to kill me.”

Matt read the words I had written, then sat the glass of water down on the bedside table with a sigh.

“You know I don’t really care for her either, but she’s not trying to kill you, Gerard,” he said finally, “She wouldn’t be working at Gavon and have all of those awards and credentials and shit in her office if she was some psychopathic murderer.”

He didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t believe me.

 _What’s the point of even trying?_ _No one ever believes the “paranoid schizophrenic” kid_.

I suddenly felt exhausted and decided I was using too much effort to sit up so I lay back down and turned onto my side, away from Matt. I was done with this conversation; I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere and I just wanted to sleep. No one was going to help me. I was just going to have to solve this problem on my own. My thoughts shifted to the pens on my bedside table and I wondered how feasible suicide via pen was.

“Are you mad at me?” Matt’s voice asked from over my shoulder.

I didn’t make any kind of response. I was too tired and I didn’t really care whether Matt thought I was mad at him or not. I just wanted it to be 10:00 already so the florescent light in my room would go out and I could slip into a state of blissful unconsciousness.

“Okay, how about this,” Matt said after a few moments of silence during which I nearly fell asleep, even with the obnoxious glaring light, “I’ll do a little snooping and see what I can find.”

This woke me up a little bit. I opened my eyes and looked back over my shoulder at the tall, skinny orderly.

“Don’t get your hopes up, I probably won’t find anything,” he continued as he placed the pill back in the vial and screwed the lid shut, “but I’ll take a quick look through Dr. Wesk’s laptop tomorrow while you guys are all in group session.”

A huge smile immediately broke out across my face and I flung my arms around Matt’s skinny body, my previous lethargy completely forgotten.

“Hey, don’t hug me, you should be hugging Dr. Wesk for making it so easy,” he said with a laugh as he pulled me off of him, “I think she’s obsessed with some guy named Michael or something cause she uses that name as the password for everything.”

I shrugged not really caring about that wicked woman’s love life, I was just happy that an adult was actually on my side for once.

“I better get going,” Matt said glancing at the digital clock’s glowing orange face, “lights out in two minutes.”

I nodded and lay back down, trying to get comfortable in the thin starchy sheets. I was just about to close my eyes and drift off into sleep when Matt turned back towards me on his way out the door.

“Goodnight Gerard, Goodnight Serap,” he said with a smile, surprising me.

 _What? Why was he saying goodnight to Serap?_ I furrowed my eyebrows at him, and a look of realization suddenly crossed his face.

“Oh… is Serap not here?” he asked looking embarrassed.

I shook my head wishing I could talk so I could tell him how ridiculous it was to suggest that I would be hiding Serap somewhere in my room. It wasn’t like me and Serap were secretly dating or something, was that what people thought?

“Oh okay, well, my bad,” Matt said finally, regaining his composure and stepping out through the doorway, “Night.”

When the door had closed behind him, I reached over and grabbed the roll of tape from my bedside table. Did people really think that me and Serap had a thing? I wondered worriedly if the new kid thought that as I ripped off a long piece of tape and placed it securely over my mouth. I patted down the edges so that the tape would stay firmly in place throughout the night. I really didn’t know whether or not I even talked in my sleep, but you just can’t take any chances with catchers.

Just as I placed the roll of tape back on the bedside table, the harsh bright light above my head suddenly flicked off and I was immersed in total darkness. It felt comfortable, like a big, heavy blanket of blackness and I finally relaxed and closed my eyes. Who cared if some kid I didn’t even know thought that Serap and I were dating, Matt was actually going to _help_ me! I finally had someone on my side that Dr. Wesk trusted.

Maybe there was hope for me yet.


	6. From The Lights To The Pavement

             _What. If. Matt. Doesn’t. Find. Anything._ Serap signed as we walked down the tiled hallway towards the group discussion room. I wrung my fingers together with a mix of nervousness and excitement, unable to calm the fluttering in my stomach. Would today be the day that I finally brought down Dr. Wesk?

            _Let’s. Just. See. What. Happens._ I signed back, finally pulling my nervous hands apart from each other. This was it. The moment of truth. I wondered if Matt was in Dr. Wesk’s office yet. What if he had already found incriminating evidence?

            As soon as I walked through the door to group session my heart dropped down into my stomach.

            _Where’s. Dr. Wesk._ Serap and I both signed at the same time, her expression mirroring the worry on my face. The seat at the head of the circle where Dr. Wesk was normally seated as we came in for group discussion was empty.

            “No, you have to stay, it’s group session time,” Ray’s voice carried across the circle of plastic chairs. I looked over to see who the curly haired lunatic was talking to now.

            “What the hell is group session time? What’s going on?” the new kid shot back, trying to break free from the grip Ray held on his wrist.

            “The same thing we did yesterday, remember?” Ray continued in a soothing voice, trying to calm the boy’s growing panic.

            At the sight of the new kid I suddenly grew very aware of how close Serap and I were standing.

            _Maybe. We. Shouldn’t. Sit. Next. To. Each. Other. Today._ I signed to Serap once I had managed to peel my eyes away from the scene.

            Serap’s eyebrows furrowed and she signed a simple, _Why._

            I shrugged, resisting the urge to look back at the new boy as I did so. I then quickly sat down in a seat between the Peyser twins and Lisa before the new kid would have the chance to look up and see me standing with Serap. I didn’t really know why, but I _really_ didn’t want him to think that me and Serap were a couple.

            “Look, I don’t even know who you are, but can you please just let go of me,” the new kid pleaded with Ray before turning to face the rest of the group, “And does anyone have a cell phone I can use? I need to call my mom.”

            A cell phone? Why would any of us have a cell phone? As far as I knew, only adults had those things.

            Suddenly the door opened and I spun around to see if Dr. Wesk had finally showed up.

            She hadn’t. It was Jimmy.

            The nervousness in the pit of my stomach grew as the obese, bald orderly made his way across the room and sat down in the chair usually reserved for Dr. Wesk, his ass cheeks cascading over the sides like waterfalls.

            “Okay guys, Dr. Wesk couldn’t make it today so-” he started before erupting into a fit of coughs. I immediately scanned the room for Serap, but she was nowhere to be found. Great, now Serap was missing too. My fingers immediately returned to their nervous wringing as I waited for the fat old man to stop coughing and tell us what the hell was going on.

            “Um, excuse me sir, but I’m not supposed to be here,” the new kid said politely as Jimmy’s coughing fit started to subside.

            The fat orderly’s beady eyes immediately shot to the kid, and his coughing stopped.

            “Son, you are here for a reason, now sit down,” he said impatiently before turning to the rest of us, “Now, as I was saying, Dr. We-“

            “No, really, you don’t understand, I’m not supposed to be here, and I have to get home in time to get ready to go trick or treating,” the new kid continued frantically, the panic starting to rise in his voice again.

            By this point, everyone in the room was staring at him. _What was he trying to pull?_ Didn’t he know that whatever he was trying to do wasn’t going to work _?_ Once you’re thrown in Gavon, there’s no talking your way out.

            “Are you the amnesia kid?” Jimmy asked, as he scanned the list that he held in his grubby fingers, “Frank Iero?”

            “Uh…what?” was all Frank said, his animated hands dropping lifeless to his sides and his previous urgency completely gone. _Amnesia? So Serap was right… unless Jimmy was lying._

            “Is that your name son?” the fat orderly asked, growing impatient.

            “Yes,” Frank replied, his eyes moving from one face to another, looking for an explanation, but when his eyes landed on mine he stopped. There was a faint recognition in them. He remembered me; there was no way he had amnesia. I was tired of people accusing him of it.

            “Where is Dr. Wesk?” I quickly scribbled across my notepad before holding it up for Jimmy to see.

            “Oh, right you’re the quiet kid,” he said before looking down at his list, “Gerard Way?”

            I pushed the notepad towards him again, ignoring his question.

            “Okay, well Mr. Way, I was _trying_ to get to that,” he drawled, leaning back in the chair which creaked under his weight, “but you kids keep on interrupting me.”

            I sat my notepad down in my lap cooperatively and gave the fat man my full attention. I needed to know what was going on. Matt was supposed to be going through Dr. Wesk’s laptop while she was at group session with us, but if she wasn’t here… where was she?

            “Like I was saying, Dr. Wesk couldn’t make it because something came up, some kind of family emergency I think she said,” he continued, placing his finger into his ear and digging out ear wax, “so I’m gonna be leading this little session today kiddos.”

            Normally I would be disgusted by Jimmy digging ear wax out of his hairy ears, but I was too full of nerves to even care. I was scared. _If Matt gets killed and it’s my fault…_

I couldn’t focus on anything that anyone was saying, my eyes remained glued on the clock for the rest of group session. I had to get out of there. I had to make sure Matt was okay.

 

~~

 

            “Hey! Gerard!” the new kid’s voice called me as I walked quickly down the tiled hallway towards Dr. Wesk’s office, “Wait up!”

            I hesitated for a moment, feeling the magnetic pull that the boy somehow seemed to have on me, but then regained my speed. This was no time to socialize. I had to get to Dr. Wesk’s office before it was too late… _if it wasn’t already_.

            “Gerard!” the kid called one last time, but he had stopped trying to catch up to me so I figured he had given up. I was slightly disappointed and briefly contemplated turning around, but I resisted the urge and kept walking. Matt’s safety was more important right now. I broke into a sprint.

            As I burst through the doorway, I was expecting the worst. Visions of Matt’s dead body in a pool of blood on the ground and Dr. Wesk standing over him cackling flashed through my head, but the scene I found was much different. As I stood in the doorway with my hands on my knees, trying to regain my breath, all that I found before me was Dr. Wesk sitting at her desk, quietly going through paperwork with no Matt in sight.

            “Gerard?” she asked dumbly, looking up from her paperwork at me, “I thought our session wasn’t until eleven.”

            I stared at her, trying to adjust to the realization that Matt wasn’t dead and that I wasn’t in immediate danger. Once I had regained my composure I stood up straight and wrote on a blank page of my notepad, “and I thought you had a family emergency.”

            She smiled as she read it, but let me assure you, the smile was not a friendly one.

            “Oh, is that what I told Jimmy?” she asked, looking quite amused. I glared at her coldly, hoping that I didn’t look as confused as I actually was.

            “Please, take a seat,” she continued, tossing her long black dreadlocks over her shoulder and putting her papers in a drawer, “We might as well have your session now since you’ve actually come here willingly for once.”

            I eyed her suspiciously, dying to know if she had caught Matt going through her laptop or not, but not wanting to bring it up in case she hadn’t. Maybe I was putting too much faith in Matt anyways, he probably never even had any intention of snooping through Dr. Wesk’s laptop and only told me that so that I wouldn’t be “mad at him.”

            “So, how’s the new medication?” she asked conversationally, as if we were two best friends just having a chat over nonfat mochas. I didn’t let my expression soften, I wasn’t going to play along with her little friends act.

            “Well, you’re still not talking I see,” she said with a laugh, “But it’s only the first day after all. We’ll see much more improvement in the next few days.”

            “Why are you in such a good mood?” I wrote on my notepad. I hesitated before I turned it around to show her; I was almost afraid to ask.

            Her smile only stretched wider as she read it.

            “Just did a little spring cleaning and I feel _much_ better,” she replied with a devious grin. I didn’t bother pointing out that it was November. “And by the way Gerard, would you care to explain that little message you left me with last session?”

            I glared at her hard. She was obviously playing dumb, but I would go along with it anyways.

            “Your tattoos,” I wrote, and seeing that she was still acting confused I added, “’Bringer of Death,’ that’s cute.”

            She stared at what I had written for a while and I thought that maybe I was about to get a confession, when she suddenly looked back up at me. Her expression wasn’t guilty or remorseful or even angry. It was amused. _Surprise, surprise._

            “And, ‘The Tap’ tells you this?” she asked me, clarifying. I simply nodded, glad at least that she could no longer deny The Tap’s power. “I’m sorry Gerard, but you don’t know how to read Chinese any more than you know how to speak any other language but English. These symbols mean ‘patience’ and ‘forgiveness.’”

            She pulled up her sleeves as if to show me. I was not amused.

            “Bullshit,” was all I wrote before spinning my pad around to face her.

            “Watch your language Gerard,” she warned, pulling her sleeves back down over her wrists, “The sooner you accept that ‘The Tap’ is not real, the sooner you’ll get out of here.”

            I didn’t let myself feel any hope at what I knew was a false promise. As long as Dr. Wesk worked here, there was no way I was getting out alive.

            “What was your little friend’s name again?” she asked suddenly. I eyed her suspiciously wondering why she was asking me this.

            “Serap,” I wrote assuming that was who she meant, before cautiously placing the notepad on the desk. She read the name then opened her laptop and typed something on the keys. “Okay, if you can speak all languages, then tell me what ‘Serap’ means in Turkish.”

            “It means moon,” I answered her on the notepad, not bothering to write out the story of why Serap had been named after the moon.

            Dr. Wesk looked down at my answer and then shook her head, “No Gerard. It doesn’t.”

            I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of her condescending voice telling me boldface lies through her stupid sickening smile. I was getting nowhere. I stood up abruptly, causing the crappy little chair to clatter to the floor.

            “Oh, and as for your new medicine,” she went on unaffected by my sudden anger, “I hope I was correct in my assumption that you refused it orally, because I took the liberty of having it injected into your bloodstream while you were sleeping last night.”

            A sickening fear slowly washed over me as the realization of her words hit me. My eyes darted to my arms, and I yanked up the sleeves of my black hoody in search of the breach. Sure enough, in the crook of my left arm was a small inconspicuous piece of tape with a bit of cotton wedged underneath it that I had failed to notice before.

            I slowly looked back up to meet her satisfied smile, betrayal written all over my face. I had never felt so hopelessly defenseless in my life. This woman was going to kill me and there was nothing I could do to stop her… and she knew it.

            The fight that had been raging in me only seconds before was completely drained from my body. There was nothing left to fight for, she had won.

            “If you don’t mind, I’ll be retiring to my quarters now,” I wrote in big sloppy letters, not feeling like putting effort into anything. I didn’t even bother to wait for her response. I just ripped the paper out of my notepad, dropped it onto her desk and took my leave.

            I didn’t bother to look behind me as I left, but I could guess that she was probably pretty damn amused.


	7. And I Feel Like There’s Nothing Left To Do, But Prove Myself To You

As I ambled down the stark, white-walled hallway towards the courtyard in defeat, I saw nothing but my worn sneakers hitting tile over and over again. I had started to count the tiles when, halfway to the double doors that would lead to the outdoor area designated for “free time,” I stopped in my tracks and began walking back in the opposite direction, towards my room.

 _Fuck it all. Fuck_ “free time.” _There was nothing free about being trapped in a fenced in little section of hell with psychotic demon children. Serap would just have to fend for herself today._

Normally, I went along with the dumb little schedule that was kept here at Gavon in hopes of proving that I was ready to leave, but what was the point of playing along now? What was the point now that everything was over? Now that Dr. Wesk had already won?

“Gerard?”

I looked up from my dragging feet to see the new kid, Frank, sitting against the wall of the hallway, his exposed knees pulled up to his chin and his eyes lifted up towards me in a way that looked almost hopeful.

I froze and stupidly opened my mouth to ask him why he wasn’t in the courtyard, but quickly clamped it shut as soon as I realized what I was doing.

“Um,” Frank started, shifting his gaze back down to the stray threads of his jeans, unable to hold the intense eye contact, “Are we like… friends?”

When I didn’t reply immediately, his eyes slowly came back up to meet mine, but his fingers remained diligently working on their task of unraveling his worn jeans.

I stared back at him, cursing myself for leaving my notepad in the group session room in my hurry to save Matt.

“Okay, never mind, sorry,” Frank blurted out embarrassedly after it became clear that I had no intention of responding. My eyes widened in slight panic as he began to stand up and I became aware of the fact that I _really_ didn’t want him to walk away. I couldn’t leave things like this; he couldn’t think that I had rejected him.

            “It’s just, I think I have amnesia, and I just thought that maybe we were friends or something since you’re the only person here that even looks familiar,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes down as he got to his feet, “but forget it, I was just being stupid.”

I held my breath as he turned and began shuffling down the hallway with his hands shoved in his pockets.

“Wait."

The sound was weak and strained, but it scared the shit out of me; my own voice was so foreign to my ears. I immediately spun around, scanning the long hallway for any signs of potential catchers, my heart rate speeding up, pounding in my ears. I had _not_ meant to say that out loud. Terror engulfed me completely, threatening to drown me

 _It’s okay._ I told myself, _you have nothing to lose. You’ve already lost everything. It’s okay._

 __ No matter how many times I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter, it did nothing to calm my sweating palms and shortened breathing. What _did_ calm them was the look on Frank’s face when he turned around to face me. The hope radiated out of his round chocolate brown eyes and his expression was so innocent and pure in its complete and unguarded hopefulness that suddenly nothing else mattered.

“Sorry for ignoring you,” I croaked out in a half whisper, unintentionally wincing at the sound of my own voice, “It’s just… I don’t normally… do this.”

As I spoke, Frank watched me with great interest, his expression reminding me of the way he had watched me so intently at that first group session when I had given up my seat for Serap.

“It’s okay,” he said finally, his eyes still focused intently on me, filled with curiosity, “But what do you mean, ‘this?’”

“Talking,” I told him with a shrug, my voice growing stronger and more even, “I usually keep quiet to keep my soul safe from catchers, but nothing matters anymore.”

A look of surprise immediately replaced by concern passed through Frank’s expressive eyes. Now I understood why people said that eyes were the windows to the soul, Frank certainly hid nothing with his.

“Why… does nothing matter anymore?” he asked cautiously, almost hesitantly, as if I were this delicate house of cards that could be shattered by even the slightest breeze.

I made a conscious effort to stand up straighter and try not to give him the impression that I was fragile or weak.

“Because I’m going to die,” I replied simply, my expression remaining emotionless, “because my doctor poisoned me.”

After the words had hit the air, we stood there in the empty hallway just staring at each other for a long time. Or at least it felt like a long time; it was hard to tell. Time always got weird when I was staring into Frank’s round, chocolate eyes. Seconds seemed to stretch themselves out into hours and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same for him.

“Gerard, we’re both messed up,” he said finally, startling me out of my trance. He looked at me with sad eyes, but I didn’t understand. How was he messed up? And why did he think that I was too?

“You think that if Dr. Wesk is trying to kill me that I must be messed up?” I questioned, slightly offended, but more confused than anything, “You think that would even _justify_ murder?”

I waited for a response, but Frank just stared at me some more with his concerned puppy eyes. I was about to open my mouth to continue when Frank finally replied.

“Can’t you see it, Gerard?” he asked with solemnness that I wouldn’t have expected from the punk kid standing in front of me, “We’re both here for a reason.”

Suddenly, I didn’t want to hear anymore. My brain was screaming at me, _RUN. DON’T LISTEN. GET OUT OF THERE **NOW**_ **.**

 **** Looking back over my shoulder, then behind Frank towards my bedroom door I made a split second decision and sprinted past him towards safety. My heart beat pounded in my ears, drowning out any shouts he might’ve made after me, and after clumsily opening my door with shaking hands, I slammed it shut behind me and threw myself onto my bed with my hands clamped over my ears.

I was safe now, but my body was still in panic mode. For no good reason I started to cry, salty stinging tears forcing their way out from between my shut lids and soaking my pillow. The hands pressed firmly against my ears did nothing to quiet the high-pitched screams that were hurdling violently through my head.

_THAT LITTLE FUCK IS TRICKING YOU. HE THINKS YOU’RE AN IDIOT. YOU **ARE** AN IDIOT. HE’S A CATCHER JUST LIKE THEM AND YOU TALKED TO HIM._

__ “STOP!” I cried as loudly as I could, begging for their attention, but the voices ignored me. It terrified me that I couldn’t control them when they were a part of my own mind. In my fear, my tears started to gush out heavier and I heard myself sobbing.

_KILL HIM. HE’S LYING TO YOU. HE’S TRYING TO DESTROY YOU. KILL HIM._

__ “STOP!” I screamed as loud as I could, my voice coming out high pitched and unnatural in my desperation.

Suddenly a hand was on my shoulder and my head shot up, coming face to face with Dr. Wesk.

The voices in my head silenced immediately at her presence, as if they feared the dreadlocked witch as much as I did.

“Do you realize that you’re screaming?” she asked, the shock visible all over her face.

I yanked myself away from her touch and turned away, hastily wiping the tears from my eyes.

“Gerard, answer my question,” she insisted, her tone changing from surprised to stern. I felt a pen being placed into my left hand, but I let it drop through my fingers.

“Yes, I am aware,” I answered her, concentrating on keeping my voice even. If I was going to die here, I refused to show her I was afraid. I was going to die with dignity.

From over my shoulder there was silence. I wondered briefly if she had left the room.

“Oh,” she said finally.

I turned my head to observe her amazed expression and confirmed that, for once, there was not a trace of a smirk anywhere on her face. It was nice to completely dumbfound the witch who always had a never ending supply of condescending things to say. I decided that even if I did die today, in some small way, I had still won.

“Wow,” she added articulately, “It’s just, I, uh, wow, I’ve never heard you talk before.”

“Yes, I know,” I replied, unimpressed. I turned back over on my side, facing away from her.

“Okay, well, I guess the medicine is really working then?” she asked me, sounding unsure of herself and more than a little confused.

“Right, the medicine,” I agreed, not bothering to argue. At this point, I just wanted to die already and get it over with. Dragging it out like this was torturing me; how slow acting can a poison even be?

“And Serap? She’s gone now?” she probed.

“What?” I asked, turning towards her as anger started to bubble up dangerously inside my chest, “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing, I was just asking,” Dr. Wesk insisted, holding her hands up in innocence. I eyed her suspiciously.

“Then why haven’t I seen her since she disappeared from group session this morning?” I demanded, a sickening fear slowly crawling into my gut. Whatever was between Dr. Wesk and I had nothing to do with her, she needed to keep Serap out of this.

“Probably because of the new medicine you’re on,” Dr. Wesk answered, making absolutely no sense. Did she think I was an idiot?

“You can kill me as slowly and painfully as you want, you can even take my entire soul from my dying breath, but you are _not_ going to lay a finger on Serap, you evil bitch,” I barked, my fury taking control, “Do you understand me?”

Dr. Wesk stared at me at first in surprise, but that surprise was immediately replaced by anger.

“How _dare_ you speak to me that way you little brat,” she gritted from between clenched teeth, her hands balling into tight fists, “You are _nothing_. Nothing but a psychopathic _murderer._ ”

“A murderer? You’ve got to be kidding me,” I shouted, “You’re the murderer!”

Before I had even finished my sentence, Dr. Wesk’s face went completely white and all of the rage dropped right out of her.

“Excuse me,” she said quickly, standing up and making her way towards the door, “I’ve said too much.”

She exited quickly and I was left staring at my bedroom door in a mix of confusion and residual anger, wondering what had just happened.


	8. Bright Lights That Won't Kill Me Now

           “ _Fuck._ ”

My eyes blinked open and were met with the familiar sight of my room shrouded in darkness. _Did someone just curse or had I dreamt it?_

As my eyes adjusted to the blackness, the monstrous form of a massive shadow-giant suddenly materialized at my bedside, leaning heavily against my table. I leapt back to the far edge of my bed, stifling a scream as I tried to discern the identity of the intruder.

“Sorry kid, didn’t mean ta scare ya,” Jimmy’s voice floated to me through the ghostly darkness as the shadowy figure held its meaty arms up in surrender, “I banged my knee up against the little table ya got here, hurt like the dickens.”

It was at that moment that a tiny glint of silver caught my eye. The filtered moonlight reflected against the metal of the small syringe that protruded from the end of the shadow’s left limb, as if the moon herself was trying to alert me of the deadly weapon’s presence.

In a slight panic, I tried to scoot myself away from it, but as my back was already against the wall I only succeeded in bunching my worn comforter up into a tiny crumpled barrier between the monstrous silhouette and myself.

“Okay kiddo, I’m just gonna give ya a little medicine, then ya can go right on back to sleepin’,” Jimmy’s voice wheezed at me as the bulky shade lumbered forward. Although I had spoken to a catcher just last night, suddenly parting my lips was _no_ t an option. I fought the urge to scream at the approaching figure to stop, the weight of the fatal danger I was in closing in around my throat and sending me back to my old paranoid ways. I knew I had to do something though, and just as the glinting needle made its descent towards my arm, I kicked it away with my socked foot as hard as I could.

The shrill metal clang that followed caused both of us to freeze, and as I stared at the menacing silhouette in fear, its blank face slowly began to melt into Jimmy’s.

“What’d ya do that for?” Jimmy’s face asked me angrily. I didn’t take my eyes off of his shadowy back as he turned and started stumbling across the room in search of his weapon. He mumbled something about “these kids gettin’ nuttier and nuttier” and “why don’t they put goddamn light switches in’ese rooms” when I decided now was my chance. While his massive back was turned, I leapt from my bed, nearly falling on my face, but quickly regained my balance and sprinted through the slightly ajar door and into the tiled hallway.

My chest was heaving and my heart was pounding as I looked down the hallway left and right. I made a split second decision and bolted right, not really knowing where I was trying to get to, just knowing what I was trying to get away from. If it was necessary for Wesk to stick me with another dose of poison, then maybe the first one hadn’t been enough to kill me. Maybe I _still had a chance_. I realized somewhere in the back of mind that if I wasn’t on my deathbed after all that meant I had imparted pieces of my soul to the witch for nothing, but I didn’t have time to regret it now. I didn’t think about where I was going, I just made as many turns as I could, sliding and bumping into walls in my socked feet, but never stopping. I didn’t hear the footsteps of a pursuer, but I didn’t slow down; I didn’t trust my ears to hear anything over the sound of my heart slamming itself repeatedly against my ribcage.

“What do you mean _escaped_?” Dr. Wesk’s acidic whisper bit through the night air from around the corner that I was just about to turn.

I immediately slid to a stop and pressed my back flat against the wall, fear swallowing me whole. I waited, straining my ears to hear which way her clickity heels would start walking.

“Okay, call me back when you find him,” she hissed, more snake-like than ever, “I’ll go have a look around myself.”

_Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit._

The curses streamed through my mind, freezing it in my panic. _What now? What now? What now?_

The click of Dr. Wesk’s heels shot through the darkness like bullets, and I realized they were heading my way. In two seconds the witch would be rounding this corner.

Without a second of deliberation, I silently but swiftly opened the door beside me and fell back into the dark, shadowy bowels of the room behind it, soundlessly closing the door again. I held my breath and pressed my ear against it until Dr. Wesk’s clacking heels had passed by and were fading away far in the distance.

I let out the breath I had been holding and slid slowly down the door until my butt hit the ground. The relief washed over me in waves and my heart rate started to slow back down to normal.

“Where the fuck am I?” a familiar voice cut through the darkness of the room. I strained my eyes to see the speaker through the shadows. “Hello? Are you going to answer me or just sit there in the dark staring at me like a creep?”  


I suddenly recognized the voice just as the shadows faded away to reveal Frank’s short figure sitting up in his bed. _Should I reply? Was it okay to speak to Frank?  
_

“Hi,” I said quietly, testing the waters. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Frank always seemed to compel me to trust him. There was just something about those big brown eyes that made you feel like you had nothing to hide, like you were safe.  


“Um, yeah, hi,” he said after a momentary silence, “Now, where am I?”  


“Your room?” I guessed hesitantly, not sure why he was asking me this or what he meant by it.

“I’m not stupid,” Frank shot back defensively, “You may have drugged me up but I know when I’m not in my own room.”  


“I didn’t drug you up,” I said weakly, the confusion apparent in my voice. I didn’t know what Frank was talking about and suddenly I was scared of him too.  


“Okay… well is this a kidnapping or what?” he snapped, the confusion now showing in his voice too.  


“What?” I blurted out in surprise, “I’m not kidnapping you! I’m just as stuck in this place as you are!”  


It suddenly occurred to me that Frank might not be able to recognize me in the dark so I stood up and slowly walked towards him with my palms out in an I-mean-no-harm gesture, “It’s me, Gerard.”  


He watched me intently as I nervously made my way towards his bed, but he didn’t seem to be alarmed or shrink back. I stopped when I reached his bed and bit my lip as I waited for him to say something.  


“You’re cute,” he said finally.  


A hot blush crept up into my cheeks and I quickly turned away from his intense stare, casting my eyes on my socked feet instead, “Um, thanks…”  


“Well are you going to tell me where I am or not?” he demanded, his voice pulling my gaze back up to meet his.  


“Uh…” I replied intelligently, “Your room? Gavon? Brunswick? New Jersey? America? Earth?”  


“Hey, stop patronizing me,” he shot back, his perfect eyebrows bunching together in the center of his forehead, “You’d be confused too if you went to sleep in one place and woke up in another.”  


I stared at him as it slowly dawned on me that I had been wrong all this time.  


Frank really did have something wrong with him. Frank had amnesia.  


The realization crushed me.  


“Frank,” I said softly, the whisper barely escaping my throat as I sat down on the edge of his bed. _Why was I getting so upset about a boy I barely knew having amnesia? Who cared if he had amnesia? And why did my insides feel like they were tearing themselves apart?  
_

“What?” he asked cautiously, sensing my distress. When I didn’t reply right away his eyes searched my face for the answer, panic creeping into his voice, _“What?_ ”  


“Um,” I started, not sure how you were supposed to tell someone that they had amnesia, “You’re in a mental institute, like, where they keep kids that have something wrong with their heads.”  


He stared at me. I could see a struggle taking place behind his emotive eyes. He didn’t know whether or not to believe me. _I_ didn’t want to believe me. _This can’t be right. There can’t be anything wrong with Frank.  
_

“You have amnesia, which means you forget things,” I told him as much as I told myself. I hoped that I sounded convincing.  


“I know what amnesia is, I may go to public school but I’m not an idiot,” Frank scoffed, rolling his eyes. He layered his voice with sarcasm in an attempt to mask his fear and confusion, but they still came through in those all-telling eyes.  


“Okay,” I replied, “Did you know that today’s not your birthday?”  


Frank blinked at me then whipped his head around to look at the clock on his bedside table as if its little blinking numbers would tell him the truth of everything.  


“What is going _on?_ ” he groaned after it told him nothing but the time. He let himself drop back onto the mattress and pulled his pillow over his face. “How old am I now? Forty-seven?” his muffled voice asked me through the pillow. I couldn’t help but smile at his melodramatics.  


“Yeah you wish, you’re turning eighty-two next month,” I informed him, pulling the pillow off of his face and dropping it onto the ground beside the bed. He smirked up at me, and the metal ring in his lip glinted tauntingly in the moonlight that poured in from the tiny window, making me feel weak. Frank was _hot_.  


“Eighty-two, huh?” he asked, captivating me with that mischievous look that came so naturally to him. As if reading my mind he added, “I’d say I’m pretty hot for an eighty-two year old.”  


I laughed as he flexed his biceps dramatically, but the butterflies were fluttering fiercely in my stomach.  


“Yeah, you are,” I agreed, before realizing how dopey eyed and stupid I looked and hastily adding, “for an eighty-two year old.”  


Just as Frank opened his mouth to say something there was a loud _BANG_ of a door slamming open and suddenly the beam of a flashlight was pouring over us, forcing me to squint my eyes against the harsh, sudden brightness.  


“ _There_ you are,” came that wicked, poisonous voice I hated so much.  


“Here I am,” I replied mockingly, still high off of Frank’s presence, making me bolder than I would normally be in the face of such grave danger.  


“ _What_ are you doing in _another patient’s_ room?” she spat, her anger rising tenfold at my audacity. As she said “ _another patient”_ she swung the flashlight’s blinding beam over to Frank, causing him to cover his eyes with his arm.  


I didn’t have an answer for that so I decided that now was probably a pretty good time to return to my vow of silence. After all, Dr. Wesk was still number one on my list of probable catchers. I glared at her, crossing my arms across my chest as if they could protect me from her wicked intentions.  


“What’s the matter Gerard?” Dr. Wesk spat, swinging the blinding light back into my eyes and clacking nearer in those menacing heels that could probably be used as weapons themselves, “ _Cat_ got your _tongue_? _”  
_

“What the fuck lady?" Frank piped in, rubbing his eyes from the intrusion of her flashlight’s bright light.  


I could’ve sworn I heard about five different bones snap as she whipped her head around to face him. The rage was seething from her tightly clenched jaw as she stared at the punk kid in bewilderment.  


“Ex _cuse_ me?” she squawked.  


“Dude,” Frank said turning to me, ignoring the fuming demon at his side, “Kids like us are stuck in this place with kids like that? How is that even fair?”  


“I am _NOT_ a _patient_ , I am your _doctor_! How _dare_ you!” the witch shrieked, raising the flashlight over her head. For a second I thought she was going to clobber him with it, but then she slowly brought it back down to her side, “You two are absolutely out of control.”  


Frank raised an eyebrow at me and I could practically read his mind: **_We’re_** _out of control?_ I had to stifle a laugh.  


Luckily, Dr. Wesk hadn’t noticed. When I looked back at her she was glaring down at her phone, dialing a number before holding it to her ear.  


“Roderick?” she asked after a few moments, the anger still oozing out of her pores, “Yes, I have two that need to be put on benzodiazepines asap.”  


Frank looked over at me, worry apparent in his round chocolate eyes. I watched his perfect lips silently form the words: _What’s that?  
_

I shrugged back at him. I had no idea what benzodia-whatevers were, but I had a feeling we didn’t want to find out.


	9. On the Other Side of a Jet Black Hotel Mirror

         Once I had finally reached the giant maple in the corner of the courtyard, I plunked down heavily on top of the crunchy fallen leaves and leaned back against its wide trunk.

I was alone.

I was alone and I was tired.

I didn’t know where Serap was, but I didn’t feel like thinking about it too hard. Thinking about anything too hard exhausted me. All I wanted to do was sit against the nice solid trunk of the familiar tree and lazily crunch the fallen leaves between my fingers, breaking them apart into tiny, tiny pieces.

“’Ey kiddo,” came Jimmy’s wheezy voice as I watched his old brown shows stomp up next to me, making the leaves underneath them crackle noisily in leafy pain.

I slowly lifted my eyes up to look at him, feeling as if my eyeballs weighed two hundred pounds each. Jimmy’s round, bald head blocked the sun perfectly so I didn’t even have to squint my eyes, but the light pouring out from around him gave a disconcerting halo effect.

“I can’t letcha jus sit over ‘ere all by yerself,” he informed me, looking down at me from over the hulking mountain that was his stomach.

I was tired and didn’t feel like lifting my sketchpad up to my lap to write him a response, but he was threatening me with socialization so I had no choice. I plopped the pad onto my lap and scrawled out in lazy handwriting, “Serap will be here soon.”

Whether that was actually true or not I had no idea, but I was too tired to care and I held the pad up to show him what I had written.

_Why was Jimmy here… wasn’t it usually Matt who supervised outdoor time…_

“Okay, come on kid, why dontcha play with the angry one… Bob…” Jimmy suggested, ignoring what I had written. I was about to write out my firm opposition to this idea when suddenly Jimmy’s thick, meaty fingers were wrapped around my skinny bicep and I was being pulled onto my feet and across the courtyard towards the sandbox. My heavy note pad slipped from my tired fingers and plopped into the grass as we walked, but I didn’t really care.

“’Ey, Bob, why don‘t you play with the quiet one?” I heard Jimmy’s voice say distantly. In fact everything was starting to feel distant. Even the grass beneath my sneakers felt miles away.

“And what if I don’t want to?” I heard Bob’s voice reply. With a little bit of effort, I lifted my heavy skull up to see Bob standing in front of me, his arms crossed and his feet planted firmly in the sand of the sandbox as if he were claiming the small square of dirty grit for his own.

“Then you’ll be doin’ quiet time insteadda outdoors time from now on,” Jimmy replied, and with that my arm was released and Jimmy was gone. I faltered a little without Jimmy’s support, realizing how heavily I had been leaning on him now that I was standing precariously on my own. I felt like I could fall and die at any moment; the brownish grass beneath my feet looked a long, long way down.

“Don’t even think about steppin’ foot in my sandbox Way,” Bob warned me. I’m sure his voice had originally been packed with anger and hostility but it sounded gargled and distant as it passed through my ears. I lifted my gaze from the grass to his angry face, but I felt like I was seeing him through foggy glass.

“And you can tell your imaginary friend that if she fuckin’ steps in my sandbox, she’s dead too,” he added, seemingly annoyed that I wasn’t reacting. I started rubbing my eyes to try to clear the fog away when the words he spoke finally worked their way into my brain and I paused.

_Imaginary friend?_

My brain had been moving at half speed, but as soon as it heard those words it was like it set off some kind of alarm system and suddenly thoughts were hurling at me one after the other at a hundred mph.

_Ignore him. He’s lying. There’s a reason he’s in this place. He’s crazy. Hurt him. Show him that you know he’s lying. Don’t let him get away with this. **Kill him.**_

****

I reached up and covered my ears, but it did nothing to quiet the threatening voices echoing around in my skull.

“You ignoring me, Way?” Bob snarled, his face coming closer to mine. After a moment of slight confusion and distraction due to the voices flinging themselves around in my head, I realized what he had asked and quickly shook my head no.

Unfortunately, I forgot to move my hands away from my ears and before I had time to process what I had done wrong Bob was pulling his elbow back over his head and his fist was aiming straight at me. I stared up at it with wide eyes, wanting nothing more than to be able to talk so that I could cry for him to stop, but before he unleashed his anger on my face his attention was suddenly diverted to something behind me.

“What do you want, new kid?” Bob growled, his arm hovering in its position, still ready to strike at any moment.

“Um…” said a familiar voice from over my shoulder that immediately quieted the voices in my head.

_Frank.  
_

I turned around to face him, a familiar feeling slamming into my gut as I took in his image. That floppy brown fringe of hair falling across his face so carelessly… those skinned knees in his ripped jeans…

“The fat guy… told me to…” Frank paused, his eyelids drooping lazily over his chocolate eyes. He stood slumped, making his already short stature appear even shorter. “He told me to play with you guys…”

_Why was he so out of it… why was I so out of it…  
_

“Tell Jimmy you two can play with yourselves, I don’t have time for this,” Bob snapped angrily, getting impatient with Frank’s painfully slow speech.

“Um…” Frank said, obviously not fully registering what was going on, “Okay.”

Bob watched him expectantly with his burning eyes, waiting for him to leave.

Frank didn’t leave. He sat down right in the grass, then curled up on his side and closed his eyes.

_He looks so peaceful…  
_

Suddenly the gravity of the Earth became enormous and I found myself falling to my knees beside him.

“You guys are freaks,” Bob’s voice echoed distantly in my ears as I succumbed to the overbearing force to lie down in the dry, brown grass. When I was finally lying flat against the warm earth, my weak body fully supported by its strength, I felt a million times better, like I had finally been relieved from a heavy burden. I didn’t even care how weird we looked lying in the grass in the middle of the courtyard like this.

_Something’s… wrong… Why am I so… tired…_

With some effort, I rolled over onto my side and poked Frank’s arm until his heavy lids finally lifted and he stared distantly back at me.

“I think she… drugged us up,” I whispered so only Frank could hear, just in case any catchers were nearby, “Maybe this is what that benzapida-stuff does.”

“What?” Frank asked, his gaze finally focusing on me and his dark eyebrows bunching together in confusion, “Do I… know you?”

I stared at him, replaying his words in my mind.

_He didn’t remember me._

I knew it shouldn’t matter. I knew I should’ve expected this. But my heart felt like it was caving in on itself. I guess I had thought that maybe… maybe _I_ would be different. I had let myself foolishly hope that he would somehow remember _me_ with his broken mind.

 _Broken_.

If his mind was only broken… could it be fixed?

I mentally searched through the Tap’s unlimited knowledge for the answer, for the solution to all of Frank’s problems.

I suddenly stopped my mental search as a realization dawned on me.

The cure to Frank’s condition wasn’t in the Tap… it _was_ the Tap.

_If I could just give Frank the Tap, maybe he would remember everything…_

“No, you don’t know me… or you don’t remember me,” I whispered back to him finally, “but I know you. We’re like… friends.”

Okay, so maybe “friends” was an exaggeration. We were barely even acquaintances seeing as we had only spoken maybe twice ever, but I felt like there was something real between us, something that couldn’t be described with a word like “acquaintance.” Something worth remembering.

I stared into his round chocolate eyes, holding the intense gaze in hopes that he’d see something deep inside of my hazel ones that would remind him. I didn’t want him to forget me. I didn’t even want him to forget how stupid and awkward I was and how I had embarrassingly called him hot. I didn’t want him to forget that we were in this whole thing together, that Dr. Wesk was our common enemy, that it was going to be okay because we had each other.

 __“Look man…” Frank replied, finally breaking the eye contact by rolling onto his back and closing his eyes, “I’m gonna take a nap… wake me up… before trick-or-treating…”


	10. I Keep A Gun In The Book You Gave Me

            I must’ve dozed off too, because before I knew it I was being yanked up from the grass by Dr. Wesk’s cool, thin fingers, her tight grip pressing her metal rings into my skin.

            “What on Earth were you doing sleeping in the grass like that Gerard?” she asked harshly as she led me firmly towards the double glass doors leading back into the facility.

             I guessed it was time for our session, _yippee_.

            As I let myself be pulled along, I looked back over my shoulder at where I had been laying to see if Frank had woken up, but the grass where he had been when I fell asleep was empty. I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that he had left me. As I was steered through the glass doors I gave the courtyard one final scan for the short, punk kid, but he was nowhere to be seen.

 

~

 

            “I’m pleased to see that you are much more docile today,” Dr. Wesk informed me with a tight smile, her hands clasped together in the center of her desk. “You and Frank were absolutely out of control last night.”

            Too lazy to lift both hands, I lifted one and rubbed one of my eyes in an attempt to make Dr. Wesk’s slightly fuzzy figure come into focus. It didn’t help. She pushed a piece of paper and pen across her desk towards me and I stared at it.

            “Are you back to your vow of silence again, Gerard?” she prodded in a way that I would describe as gently if it were coming from anyone else but Dr. Wesk.

            “Yes,” I wrote on the paper. I didn’t bother spinning it around to face her. She could read it well enough upside-down.

            After looking at my answer, she sat back in her chair heavily and let out a sigh.

            “Why not Gerard? The medicine was really seeming promising yesterday when you spoke to me, but now it seems that you’re having a regression,” she stated. It was obviously quite tedious for her to feign such concern as she looked quite exhausted from the effort. “Is it because of the ‘Catchers’ again?”

            I picked up the pen again and wrote, “Yes.”

            It wasn’t really that I was trying to be short with her, although I had every right to be, it was more that I was simply too tired to think of anything more to say. I stared at her and waited, willing the session to be over so I could return to my room and go back to sleep.

            “Gerard,” she said firmly, gaining my attention, “Are you going to tell me why I found Matt in my office, going through my _laptop_ on Sunday?”

            My sluggish heart rate quickened at her words. _He really did it? He really did go through her laptop for_ me _?_

            My initial excitement vanished immediately when my lethargic brain finally realized the other meaning that Dr. Wesk’s words held.

            She had caught him… and I hadn’t seen him since.

            “What’d you do to him?” I wrote hurriedly on the paper, which was quickly running out of space from my carelessly large writing.

            “Oh, nothing,” she mocked with a self-pleased smirk plastered on her face. “I gave him a lollipop and told him to have a great day.”

            “Answer my question,” I squeezed into the blank space that was left in the corner of the paper.

            “Answer mine,” she replied, crossing her legs and resting her clasped hands on her lap definitively.

            I flipped the sheet of paper over and wrote on the back, “I asked Matt to see if there were any emails from my parents that you hadn’t shown me.”

            I hoped that she would see this as a lesser offense than snooping around for evidence indicating that she was trying to murder her patient.

            “Oh, is that so,” Dr. Wesk replied uncertainly, keeping her eyes trained intensely on mine. I stared back and didn’t blink. Blinking was a sign of lying right? Or was not blinking a sign of lying?

            I nodded.

            “Well,” she said finally, buying my fib, “You know your parents don’t write you Gerard, I’ve never lied to you about that.”

            I nodded again, not letting my tired mind linger on the fact that in all of the years I had been at Gavon my parents had never once bothered to visit me or call me. I didn’t care.

            I didn’t.

            “It’s a shame that you roped Matt into your little plan to invade my privacy though,” Dr. Wesk continued, tucking a stray black dreadlock behind her ear, “He was a very good orderly.”

            “Was?” I wrote.

            “Yes, **was**.”

            That was all she said.

            I didn’t need to hear any more.

            Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and without any response from Dr. Wesk, the door opened and Carl’s freckled face was peeking around it.

            “Ms. Wesk,” the skinny, ginger male nurse squawked in his awkward squeaky voice, “We need a list of everything the Iero kid was on, it’s urgent.”

            “It’s _Doctor_ Wesk,” the witch snapped, her attention finally diverted away from me, “and Claudia should have a record of everything that he’s been given.”

            “Claudia was the one who sent me here to ask you,” Carl squawked back, his urgency apparent in the way he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his heels.

            Dr. Wesk let out a huge, exasperated sigh.

            “You know what, I’m just going to take care of this myself, it amazes me how incompetent all of you are,” she spat, standing up and clacking around her desk towards the door, “Gerard, you’re dismissed.”

            I sat frozen in my chair, my eyes darting back and forth between Dr. Wesk and the skinny male nurse until they had both left the room, leaving me alone in the office.

            _Iero_. Carl had said _Iero_.

            Was that what Jimmy had said Frank’s last name was in group session that day?

            _No… it couldn’t have been. It must’ve been something else._

            I turned back to the abandoned desk in front of me. My eyes moved from the paper covered with my scrawls, to Dr. Wesk’s beloved meteorite knife in its display stand, to the laptop that sat in the desk’s corner.

            I suddenly felt less tired.

            After a quick look over my shoulder to make sure the door was still closed behind me I quickly scrambled around to the other side of the disk and clicked open the small black machine.

            I held my breath as it booted up, hoping to god that it wouldn’t make a loud sound as it turned on.

            To my relief, it made no sound. It simply showed me the password entry screen and after typing “Michael,” I was in. It was almost too easy.

            I was a little surprised when Dr. Wesk’s desktop came up. Her background was a picture of the witch herself in a hospital bed, her long black hair flowing freely around her, and in her arms a newborn baby. I didn’t know what was more shocking, the fact that she didn’t have dreadlocks, the fact that she genuinely looked _happy_ , or the fact that Dr. Wesk had a _kid_.

            In addition to all of those mysteries, I also had no idea why any woman would put such an unattractive picture of herself as her background. Weren’t there any nice pictures of her with her kid from more recent times when she wasn’t makeup-less and covered in sweat? Judging from how young Dr. Wesk looked in the picture, the kid had to be at least 14 or 15 by now.

            _Whatever_.

            I shook all thoughts of Dr. Wesk and her baby out of my head and refocused on my task.

_Where to start?_

            I opened up her documents folder and scanned through the names of the folders within it. They all had boring names like, “Tax Data 2010,” and “2009 Prescription Records.”

            Maybe one of them was a falsely named folder that actually contained incriminating evidence, but honestly I was getting antsy to bolt the room before Dr. Wesk came back and the last thing I wanted to do was read through a bunch of tedious tax records.

            Glancing up at the still closed door, I decided to just check her internet history before calling it quits.

            I quickly scrolled through pages of boring internet history, ready to give up, when I came to some entries that caught my eye.

                        Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

                        1:30 AM _schizophrenia medicine shown to be lethal_ – Google Search [www.google.com](http://www.google.com/)

                        1:18 AM _controversial medicine for schizophrenia_ – Google Search [www.google.com](http://www.google.com/)

                        1:15 AM _controversial medicine_ – Google Search [www.google.com](http://www.google.com/) __

I stared at the words.

            _I knew it._

            She was trying to kill me.

            I was tempted to look at the sites that she had gone to as a result of the searches, but I knew that the longer I stayed in the room, the more danger I was in.

            But before I left, I needed proof.

            I quickly printed out a screenshot of the history, hoping that no one would hear the noise of the printer as it went off.

            As it printed I quickly exited out of the browser and reclosed the laptop, leaving it exactly as I had found it. Luckily, no one seemed to notice the printer, or at least no one came barging into the room. I figured it was time to go and grabbed the paper as it came out, shoving it into the back pocket of my black pants as I slipped out the door and walked quickly down the hall towards my room.


End file.
